


Everything We Cherish Is in Ruin

by Helholden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: AFFC spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandor does not recognize Alayne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything We Cherish Is in Ruin

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fulfilled tumblr prompt. I might have gotten a little carried away with it, hence the length.

* * *

 

The girl was tall for her age, swathed in dull grey and brown, with long dark hair that hung down to her waist. She stood straight, but bowed her head to avoid his gaze. Her fingers were entwined, her hands folded nice and neat in front of her. She would not meet his eyes. He had given her no reason to avoid his gaze, and his face was half covered with a cowl to obscure the worst of his scarring.

 

He narrowed his eyes at her, staring pointedly as if it might make her clearer.

 

“This is my natural daughter, Alayne,” Petyr said. “You have not met her before—”

 

“No, I haven’t,” Sandor replied, cutting him off. He returned his gaze to Petyr. “You keep all your bastards hidden up here?”

 

Petyr’s eyes glinted in the half light of the hall. “Just the one,” he answered.

 

Sandor glanced at her again. She was too tall. Her bust was too full. Her face was sharp and angular, long with a soft chin. Her cheeks weren’t full enough. Her hair was the wrong color, too. He had not seen her eyes yet. She would not look at him.

 

She had the same meekness. She wasn’t sharp-edged like bastards had to be to survive in this world. She was soft.

 

 _Too soft_ , Sandor thought. He kept that thought to himself. _It isn’t her_ , he told himself, turning away from her again to look at his host.

 

“Do you have any food to spare for a traveling brother?” Sandor finally inquired. “I would be grateful.”

 

Petyr stared at him curiously, twirling his moustache about one of his fingers. His eyes were calculating as they had always been, but at last, Petyr pushed himself up from his chair, clapped his hands, and smiled at Sandor.

 

“You have changed a lot, Sandor,” Petyr said, and Sandor felt his chin rise slowly at being addressed by his true name. There were few who called him by his true name, and as much as he had never cared for Petyr Baelish, the man had always addressed him as Sandor instead of the Hound as everyone else had done. In his new dun brown robes and his penitence, he found it easy to feel . . .

 

 _More like a man_ , he thought, _instead of a dog_.

 

“I would be more than happy to share my table with you,” Petyr continued, “as well as an extra room for the night.” He turned his head to his daughter. “Alayne, you may share quarters with Myranda tonight, so we have a spare room for our guest.”

 

The meek girl bowed her head further. “Yes, Father,” she answered.

 

Her voice was too deep, too womanly. Sandor felt the ruined corner of his mouth twitch. He couldn’t shake the inkling in his head, but it was a foolish thought.

 

This girl, Alayne Stone, was no one to him.

 

Sandor ate at Lord Petyr Baelish’s table, and when he had his full of the food and water, avoiding the wine, he retired to the girl’s abandoned quarters for the night. It was a simple room. It wasn’t even hers. It was a guest room the girl had been using, which made it no more hers than it was his. Sandor shucked off his dirty robes, and he cleaned himself off with a cloth from the washbasin in the corner. Only a few candles were lit, and the darkness was filled with wavering shadows.

 

When he went to go lie down on the bed, it was too soft, but the pillows . . . the pillows smelled so sweet. Sweeter than any whore’s perfume, and sweeter than roses on a summer breeze. Closing his eyes, Sandor allowed himself to breathe it in deep. His calloused fingers curled inward as if to grasp the pillow.

 

He was a brother of the Faith now. He had no women, but he could breathe in the sweet scent of the girl’s pillow, and it would break no rules.

 

Before he could find sleep, there came a light rap of knuckles against the door. Sandor opened his eyes, lifting his head from the pillow. He didn’t know who would be coming to his room at this late hour, but he rose from the bed and made his way to the door. When he grasped the handle and pulled it open, Sandor was startled by the sight before him.

 

It was the girl, Alayne.

 

She stood there in a hooded cloak before him, glanced hurriedly both ways down the hall, and then she slipped past his side into the room without so much as an invitation to come in.

 

He was disgruntled, no doubt. This girl assumed too much, and he did not like it.

 

“Go on, and get out,” Sandor told her immediately, holding open the door. “I am a brother of the Faith. I have no need of wanton women or whoring.”

 

Her shock was plain as well as her embarrassment. It was too dark to tell if her cheeks had turned red, but he was willing to bet they had darkened to the color of ripe tomatoes at his brusque wording.

 

“I am not here for that . . . ser,” she said.

 

The corner of Sandor’s mouth twitched. “Ser?” he asked slowly, deliberately. He took a step forward, and then he turned around to look at the door as he pushed it shut. He gazed back at her, standing there in the dark with her cloak wrapped tightly around her. No, she was not here for that.

 

Sandor took a step forward, and then another and another, until he was standing in front of her, towering over her despite her height. The girl did not back away from him, but she wasn’t quite a girl either. She was looking up at him now in a way she had not dared to look at him in the presence of her father out in the hall. She had averted her eyes and avoided his gaze, and in here she looked straight at him—and he looked right into her eyes.

 

They were vibrant and bright but warm like the sea under a summer sun. Sandor knew those eyes anywhere. The hair color was wrong. Her face was different, so was her body and her voice. She had grown since he had last seen her, but it had been years. She was still young, of course, but she was no longer a girl. She was a woman now, and all of her younger and more youthful features were gone. She was sharper, older, but still painfully beautiful.

 

“Do you recognize me, ser?” she asked him, and Sandor wanted to laugh, but there was no amusement left in him.

 

There was joy at her life. Anger at her lost youth. Disappointment that he could not have stopped her marriage. Sorrow because he did not know what she had become in the hands of Petyr Baelish.

 

Too much time had passed, and too many things undone.

 

“Yes,” Sandor said at last, though his voice was heavy and his words were full of weight, “I recognize you, little bird.”

 

Her lip began to tremble slightly, but upon her stone-like face a smile seemed to take shape. Before he knew it, she had stepped forward and carefully closed the space between them to wrap her arms around him in a gentle hug.

 

“The Mother heard my prayer,” she said softly. Sandor wondered at her words, but he did not hug her back, too stunned to be able to act. When she pulled away from him, Sansa looked up into his face again and asked him, “Will you take me with you?”

 

“Take you with me?”

 

“Yes,” Sansa repeated, “take me with you.”

 

“Steal you?” Sandor countered. “From under Littlefinger’s nose?”

 

Sansa was silent at first, and then she said barely above a whisper, “You should have stolen me the first time.”

 

Sandor felt his mouth close tightly at her words, and he shook his head. “No, little bird, I shouldn’t have. No good would have come out of that.”

 

Sansa’s eyes glistened in the low blue light. “No good came out of it when you left,” she whispered.

 

Her words were like an arrow into his heart, and they wounded him deeply. He remembered her marriage to the Imp, the mummer’s farce of lions and savage beasts he had left her to in King’s Landing all alone. Sandor warred with it inside of his head, but come the darkest hour, they rode out of the Gates of the Moon with the stars at their backs, leaving hoof tracks in their wake.

 

As new snow slowly descended to the earth, the imprints vanished under a soft and pristine blanket of white.

 

 


End file.
